No Change

I obsess about having enough small bills to pay for things, but in this case, obsession is a fairly practical attitude. If you're not careful, an ATM machine will give you 100-peso bills, which are all almost unusable. (At 3-to-1, that's about $33 US.) No one ever has change. Last night, Martha, Mickey, Jorge, and I were comparing wallet war stories. News kiosks are notorious, so are taxi drivers. Do not even think about paying for your 10-peso taxi fare with a 100-peso note. Trust me. We've all had vendors simply refuse to sell us something because they didn't want to make change (and we've all suspected that they had the change and just didn't want to part with it.) One newsstand refused Mickey's 5-peso note to pay for a 2-peso newspaper. My solution: I have finally found an ATM that reliably gives 50s and 10s, so I only take out 150 pesos at a time. If I want 300 pesos, I take out 150 pesos twice.

Coins are also in short supply. In the States, counting out change in a checkout line is usually left to petless oldsters buying cat food. Here, clerks are constantly nudging you to check your pockets to make sure you don't have ten or twenty-five or whatever centavos.

Coins are partly in demand because you need them to ride the buses (the machines only accept coins). Jorge said he's heard that some bus lines will empty their collection boxes at the end of the day and then sell the bag of coins for more than face value.

Another one of the daily disequilibiria that make this place tick.